Trammell Crow lands MonoSol to Fulton Labs lease

Trammell Crow is finding its Fulton Market lab space to be resilient as some office tenants scale back in the buzzy neighborhood.

The landlord’s 300,000-square-foot life sciences building at 1375 West Fulton Street reached 98% occupancy on the addition of a 35,000-square-foot lease with sustainable material science company MonoSol, which markets dissolvable packaging technologies.

The MonoSol deal bucks a recent trend of companies in Fulton Market looking to sublease some or all of their office space. Hazel Technologies is searching for takers of as much as its entire 57,000 square foot office space at 320 North Sangamon Street.

That offer came not long after other tenants in the area made similar moves to unload space on the secondhand market, including global advisory firm Kroll, upscale convenience store Foxtrot Market, British public relations firm WPP and networking services firm Hologram. The five sublease offers amount to nearly 200,000 square feet of office space available in the neighborhood that has been competitive to enter for tenants.

Those subleases might fare well, however, as new construction slows in the neighborhood, said Mark Bâby, an office leasing broker with Stream Realty.

“There is only one building being built in Fulton Market,” he said, referring to the Alex Najem and Shanna Khan-led project at 919 West Fulton. “The demand will be there.”

MonoSol President Christian Hermanns said the “vibrant” surrounding area was part of the appeal.

Across the city, commercial real estate players are eyeing life science opportunities as other industries allow more remote work. Sterling Bay, for instance, is searching for an anchor tenant at 1229 West Concord, a 285,000-square-foot lab-oriented workspace. It’s built and ready to lease as the developer aims to kickstart its massive, yearslong Lincoln Yards plan set to redevelop a stretch of land along the Chicago River between Lincoln Park and Bucktown.

The 14-story 1375 West Fulton is one of two buildings equipped for life sciences companies in Fulton Market. Other area tenants in the sector include Belay Diagnostics, Charles River Laboratories, Dimension Inx, Celadyne Technologies, Portal Innovations, Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Vanqua Bio, and Talis Biomedical.

MonoSol’s 1375 West Fulton deal was brokered by Dan Lyne and Kelsey Scheive of CBRE, who represented the landlord, while Andrew Urban and David Burden of Colliers represented the tenant. 

MonoSol, which is headquartered in northwest Indiana and is a division of Tokyo-based Kuraray Group, will use a full floor of TCC’s building as an “innovation center” beginning in 2024. The company’s most notable product is a biodegradable film used to make dishwashing and laundry detergent pods.